


On Hold

by Kahvi



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-29
Updated: 2006-06-29
Packaged: 2017-10-12 15:56:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/126586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahvi/pseuds/Kahvi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of <i>Back in the Red</i>, Lister is stuck in a holding cell with the resurrected Rimmer, and comes to realize just how different this younger, living Rimmer is...</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Hold

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://lady-draco.livejournal.com/profile)[**lady_draco**](http://lady-draco.livejournal.com/).

"Oh, for heaven's sake." Rimmer groaned, giving up trying to fish his favorite pen out of the – admittedly squeaky clean and unused – toilet bowl in the holding cell using only exaggerated eyebrow movements. The holding cell in question also contained one David Lister, which was the reason his pen was doing the breaststroke in E. coli city in the first place. What a dangerously unpredictable man, he thought. All Rimmer had done was ask him to sign a written confession giving himself the entire blame for the regrettable incident which had just occurred, and fill in a suitable explanation completely exonerating Rimmer of any guilt. In reply to this simple request, the man had gone completely smegging nutso. Rimmer shook his head. Unbelievable.

"You can sod off to smegging hell," Lister yelled from the opposite side of the tiny room. It was, in fact, so tiny that yelling was completely pointless, but Lister had never been one to let facts and logic get in the way of what he wanted. And right now he wanted to hurt Rimmer – this Rimmer who was doing his bloody best to live up to his middle name; hurt him until felt even a fraction of the pain and misery that Lister was feeling right now. "Yer one messed up tosser, aren't ye?" Lister bit his gloved hand, trying to keep the insults at bay. It wouldn't help, he thought desperately; they were in a tiny cell, and aggravated, and god only knew what would happen if they kept…

"Thanks muchly, but I'll give that a miss, if you don't mind." The sarcasm dribbled from Rimmer's words like molasses from – well - whatever it was molasses dripped from. Rimmer had never been entirely certain. Was it made by insects; like honey? No, that wasn't right.

Lister groaned. "Just shut up, will ye?" If they could just stop bickering for ten minutes, maybe they'd manage to get through this without any black eyes or sore muscles.

Rimmer pursed his lips, and straightened his uniform jacket. One or two of the clasps had come undone, and he did them up now, with deliberate slowness. Neat and tidy. That was the ticket. "Can't take the heat, eh Listy? Worried that your sordid past will catch up with you? Well, that's only natural. We can't all maintain the same level of professionalism and honor as yours truly. You shouldn't beat yourself up over it."

Beat up, Lister thought. I've got a few other things he wanted to beat up. Well, one. And he was standing right in front of him. And what good would that do? "I thought I told you to shut up! God, yer such a smeghead! You and your up-the-ziggurat and yer starched underwear and yer name-label condoms and yer treeporn..."

"Treeporn?" Lister couldn't know. There was no way he could possibly know.

"Rimmer, I saw the magazines, don't even bother." Lister found himself pacing up and down the short distance of the cell floor now. He had to keep busy or he'd do something he'd regret. He had very poor impulse control, especially when he was as upset as he was now. He couldn't remember when he'd felt this angry and betrayed before. Maybe when Selby had dared him to dress in drag after a twelve-hour drinking-binge, and then posted them on the inside of the stalls in the men's-room in the disco. It was a good thing Rimmer never went there, or Lister would have had to move to escape the constant stream of insults and laughter.

"Look, I don't know why they sent them to me; there must have been some kind of mix up at the mail service. I certainly didn't order them! They just arrived one day nestled between 'Vintage Poles' and the summer edition of 'The RISK Strategist'!"

Lister stopped dead in his tracks, and swiveled round with a murderous look. "Are you medically incapable of shutting the smeg up?"

Rimmer felt his nostrils flare to maximum. "Now, see here, laddy…"

"Rimmer, shut up!"

"I don't have to answer to you, you annoying little twerp! I'm officer material! You're just a pathetic, lying twonk who enjoys getting your superior officers into trouble, that's what you are!"

Ten, Lister thought. Count to ten. Smeg, count to sodding fifty! "I wasn't lying. You all died; it happened." Calm. He had to stay calm.

"Yes, keep telling yourself that, miladdo. All the better for when the nice men come to fetch you and put you in that delightful white coat that's ever so difficult to get out of." Rimmer was starting to enjoy this. "All the better for my defense, I should say!" Lister said nothing, merely glared, and Rimmer, getting warmed up now, slid into second gear. "Honestly, I don't understand how you were expecting to get away with this. Tell, me, who is that woman, really? She doesn't look anything like the Kristine Kochanski I know."

"Yeah, well, ye don't know her, do ya," Lister fumed. He was facing Rimmer now, trying not to look at him, biting his lip.

"What, were you trying to impress her? Pretty smegging impressive this, I must say; landing you both a stint in the old brig! I bet she's just panting away for you now Listy!"

"Lay off, man," Lister breathed. The man could just not take a hint, could he?

"Oh, I expect they'll go easy on your lovely little Krissie - if that is indeed her real name," Rimmer droned on, ignoring him. "Officer, exemplary record, tight little body," his face contracted into a pleasurable smirk "which I'm sure will help her get out of here if nothing else will. Oh yes." Rimmer chuckled, imagining squeezing those lovely round buttocks together. If he hadn't just had more than enough sex to last him a lifetime and a half (surely no one had this much physical congress), the fantasy might have turned him on. Yes. That was why it didn't.

His anger momentarily forgotten, Lister stared up at his practically drooling, so-called superior officer in disbelief. "You really are a bastard, aren't you? Smegging hell, I'd forgotten how bad you used to be! Even the first week after ye died you was better than this. What the smeg is your problem, man?"

Rimmer snorted in disgust. "There you go again. Is this about that other Rimmer you keep going on about? That deadie?"

There was a significant pause before Lister replied. The air supply to the room seemed to have been cut off, and the thermostat surely must be out of whack, Rimmer thought. It shouldn't be this cold. "You what?"

"You know," Rimmer replied, puzzled at the chill in Lister's eyes and voice. "The stiffy. The ball-for-brains. H-face. The," he enounciated carefully, "ho-lo-gram. You keep talking about him. Honestly, it's like you were in love with the lighty git."

The temerpature seemed to drop a few further degrees towards absolute zero as Lister drew himself closer to the man who called himself Arnold Rimmer. "I am not," he breathed, "asking you again. Shut. The smeg. Up."

"Excellent," Rimmer cheered, "then I'll just go on uninterrupted, shall I? Whatever shall I talk about?" For some reason Rimmer could not understand, the subject of his holographic simulation had a very amusing effect on Lister. This would be fun. "You never told me what happened to him. Have you got him stashed somewhere? In your pocket, maybe? Or up some other ortifice? You said he could touch things; what kinds of things did you make him touch, eh? Did it feel like anything, or was it just like shagging a computer?" Leering, Rimmer chose this rather unfortunate moment to lean down and smirk directly in Lister's face. Unfortunate, because at that very moment Lister headbutted him.

Coughing and spluttering, Rimmer was thrown back, trying to make sense of what was happening. Before he had time to react, however, Lister had thrown a punch at his side that sent him spinning towards another wall then the one he'd been heading towards. He couldn't think; he could barely breathe. He noticed, with some detachment, that his brand new uniform jacket would be ruined by the blood that was dripping from his nose.

"Bastard," Lister kept yelling, "bastard!" He said the word over and over again like a mantra, timing his punches to it, consciously or not. He pummeled Rimmer as though he was a badly stuffed sack of potatoes hung up for boxing practice. He had no right. The bastard, bastard,bastard had no right!

Slumped against the wall, sinking down towards the floor, Rimmer tried to gain control of his senses and muscles. With a sudden burst of manic energy, he managed to grab Lister's arms and hold them there, for one brief moment, ending the barrage of punches. The rabid goit yelled and kicked at him, but a solid heave through extreme effort by Rimmer got him thrown across the room and into the wall opposite. This was not the Herculean feat one might imagine, however, as the distance was not all that much.

Lister gasped for the breath that got knocked out of him as he hit the cold metal, and tried to focus. Something was hurtling towards him. Something beige. Oh smeg, it was Rimmer! The other man grabbed him by the wrists and hauled him to his feet, forcing his arms down to his sides, and pushing his face right up against Lister's.

"I swear," Rimmer wheezed, "if this ruins my chances of becoming an officer, I'll kill you."

"Sod you," Lister managed, and kneed him in the groin. While Rimmer folded like Kryten on poker night when he thought his Mr. Lister had a chance of winning, he threw himself around his back and tried to strangle him.

Flooded with pain and the anticipation thereof, Rimmer wondered why he was suddenly having trouble breathing. He tried to get up, but that seemed to be more or less impossible. He noticed Lister's arm around his neck, and bit it, drawing blood through that threadbare leather glove Lister was wearing for some reason. Lister yelped and let him go, and Rimmer rose, panting.

Lister cradled his throbbing hand in his other, stumbling back towards the wall he hoped would still be there, his head spinning. "Shit," he spluttered, "shit!"

From across the room, Rimmer watched him with his mouth open. He leaned his hands on his thighs, trying to gather enough strength to actually stand up without assistance. "Are you mad?" he croaked through teeth that might or might not be broken from that initial head-butt. He felt them, cautiously, with his tongue. "Are you utterly, completely smegging insane?"

"Told you," Lister wheezed, taking his ruined glove off to assess the damage "to shut up."

"Or what," Rimmer parried, "you'll slam your thick skull into me again?" He stared at the hand he'd bitten, his forehead falling into a deep frown. That most definitely did not look good. Without thinking, he stepped a little closer for a better look. The look he was given, in turn, by Lister as he saw him coming, made his spine contract and try to escape into his brain.

"You don't know me, man," Lister said, quietly. "You don't even know you. And you certainly didn't know him." He thought of his Rimmer, tied to a pole, stripped almost naked and about to be buggered by his own self-loathing. "Guy, you don't know anything." Keeping his eyes locked on Rimmer's, he lifted his injured hand to his lips, and licked the blood off it, slowly. "Nothing."

Rimmer swallowed. What was wrong with him? Why didn't he just hit the smegger and be done with it? Give him a broken nose, a black eye for his obstinance? But there was just something about that face, looking - impossibly - older, more mature than it did just a few days ago, that made him move even closer instead.

Lister straightened his back slowly, his eyes stubbornly keeping contact. This wasn't Arn, he tried to remind himself. This was adrenaline flowing through his body, not anything else. Sod the fact that they were so close. Never mind the way Rimmer's legs, and things adjacent to his legs, were pressing against his. God, he'd missed Arn so much. He hadn't realized...

"I think you've given me a black eye," Rimmer mumbled, transfixed by the eyes that were not his own, "I'll look like a smegging panda."

"Oh, eh", Lister mumbled, leaning in closer still. Lips. He could touch them if he just...

"I see you two are getting acquainted, then," a sarcastic voice droned.

Lister sighed. "Just get us out of here, would ya?"

The guard, taking in the torn clothing, blood and odd position of the pair, frowned slightly. Oh well. You got all kinds on floor 13.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this story, and you like Red Dwarf slash, check out [The Red Dwarf Slash community on Livejournal](http://community.livejournal.com/reddwarfslash/) \- home of excellent RD writers!


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